Dawaa Dost: Making drugs easy on pocket
The growth of privatisation has hugely increased healthcare costs for Indians, with out-of-pocket expenditure constituting more than 60% of such spend, according to Niti Aayog’s latest report. Set up to address this issue, Dawaa Dost, a start-up, provides customers with high-quality, affordable alternatives (in the form of branded generics). Launched in 2018, it is a leading end-to-end digital platform for consumer healthcare that aims to cover over 1 bn Indians. It claims to enable 50-80% savings on medical bills, being driven by the idea of procuring and selling medicines at the right price.
Presently, Dawaa Dost has 66 stores in Rajasthan, Karnataka, Telangana and Maharashtra, and offers its services in 19,000 pin codes across India. It has also partnered with small shopowners in tier-II & III cities to distribute affordable generics directly to customers. It is an omnichannel platform that caters to over 2 million consumers via both online and offline channels, enjoying a repeat rate of more than 45%. The company’s content platform, Medwiki, is globally the largest healthcare content owner with over 7 lakh videos in 6+ Indian languages. Its other offering, Karma Dost, aims to address medication non-adherence in India by leveraging technology. For instance, the platform has a reminder feature which rewards people for taking their medicines on time.
“With our platform, we have enabled total savings of more than `203 million for our customers so far. Our affiliate marketing model reaches over 2,500 kirana stores in tier-II & III cities across India. We have a QR code that helps customers choose from over 70,000+ medicines that we offer, and upload prescriptions, wherever necessary. Once an order is placed, Dawaa Dost enables doorstep delivery via its online delivery model/dark stores,” said Amit Choudhary, CEO and founder, Dawaa Dost.
Going forward, it aims to have 500+ stores pan India in the next 24 months, and partnerships with over 30k kirana stores by FY23 end. Dawaa Dost wants to be within a 5-minute radius of every Indian. “We already have a monthly reach of 50 mn customers, which we will increase to 200 mn by December 2022. We want to help save a billion dollars in overall healthcare costs by 2025,” Choudhary added.